E-Commerce Times Talkback

Bill Gates was in Beijing last week, meeting with President Jiang Zemin and other government officials and promising to give the Chinese access to one of the most zealously guarded industrial secrets in corporate America: the Windows source code. That is a big step for Microsoft in any country. In China, where piracy is rampant, it's a huge leap. What drove Gates to make such a move? He no doubt had the threat of Linux in mind.

There is inherent risk attached to anything in cyberspace. Are we really naive enough to believe that using Linux is definitely safer? Surely the greater the challenge the greater the likelihood of damage? Are we in for a re-run of the last 30 years, albeit a little more technically advanced and a lot shorter?